Monday, 6 October 2008

Sabine Imhof

A few months ago, a Swiss (not German!) poet called Sabine Imhof asked if she could use a Sofa Portrait image on the cover of her latest collection of poems, Das Alibi der Abwesenheit.

She asked in such a lovely way I said yes, and I got the book the other day. I don't read German too well, but it looks fantastic. I feel there is a link between poetry and photography that ties the two together - a way of using the visual or the written word as a metaphorical pathway into our hearts and emotions.

Both poetry and photography are disabled by the futility of the endeavour, by a yearning for meaning or feeling that is always ultimately defeated, that is never definitive or clear.

But that defeat is also the strength of poetry and photography. That failure to settle or be still mirrors how we are, how we live, it mirrors the chaos and contradictions of our hearts, our minds, our lives and it recognises that life is something that goes beyond categorisation and the concrete, that we can look beyond and live beyond the ranking and grading and judging that stain our daily lives.

The poet, be it the written or the visual poet, recognizes what it is to be human. And long may that continue.